Back to Issue Fourteen.

tragicomedians

BY BOOMER PINCHES

 

Once again, my daughter wakes up late
in the moment of creation.
The window renders everything
combustible. Contact is promised
but the very act of touching

furthers the distance between us.
We trade hearts awhile, we’re digging
the new subjectivity. Equally pressing
is the whole concept of meanwhile.
At the next table, a gun is drawn early

in the first act and never heard from again.
The senator came back down the stairs
and apologized, talking mostly to himself
and for all mankind. The children ran
their fingers over the cracked canvas

of the earth. I ducked out for a moment,
had a thought or two about the stars
and, totally by accident, stepped
in the same river twice. Now
every day is a dress rehearsal

for Armageddon but nobody dies
while I’m talking.

Boomer Pinches lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. His fiction and poetry have appeared in The SunTin HouseNarrativeThe Massachusetts ReviewPANKThe Austin Reviewmatchbook,
notnostrums, and Best New American Voices.

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